


A Stitch That Doesn't Save

by somnivagrantTraviatus



Series: Headcanons [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, basically just a headcanon I wrote up, time is weird underground
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 10:55:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7219618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somnivagrantTraviatus/pseuds/somnivagrantTraviatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that humans age more quickly than monsters, or even that monsters age more slowly than humans. It's just that the Underground ages more slowly than everything else.</p><p>Because the best kind of trap is one that takes away everything, even after your prey escapes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Stitch That Doesn't Save

It's not that humans age more quickly than monsters, or even that monsters age more slowly than humans (barring exceptions like Boss Monsters without children). It's just that the Underground ages more slowly than everything else.

Monsters and humans had grown up side by side, until, in an age of spears and swords, a weeklong war passed, and monsterkind found itself trapped without sunlight. Then a year went by — or was it three? — and Chara fell.

“The future of humans and monsters,” the people called them, for the hope they brought of reconciliation. But for the Dreemurrs, Chara truly was the future. The human casually dropped mentions of global communication in everyday conversation, talking about how they missed something called “the internet” from the “community library” or wishing aloud that they still had their “phone” or “mp3 player”. When an exploratory mission found a pool of human castoffs in the area Asgore was thinking of calling “Waterfall”, Chara made themself invaluable by identifying the strange materials and mechanisms. From then on, it became the fashion to imitate human life as Chara saw it, from home decor to culinary endeavors to, once the CORE was up and running, electricity and all the things that came with it. “Humans must truly be powerful, to have developed all this in such a short time,” the monsters thought, and Chara pointedly did not talk about tanks and guns and bombs.

(“It’s kill or be killed out there, Ree,” they said, laughing, tears in their voice though he couldn't see them through the blanket. “They’ve wiped cities off the face of the map just to see if they _could_. They kill each other for being the wrong color or loving the wrong person or _being_ the wrong person. They'll kill you all the minute you leave, so you have to kill them first, okay? Kill them all, before they kill you.”

He didn't believe them, then. But later, a flower would bomb a human, picturing holes where cities had stood and thinking _kill or be killed_.)

Then the second fell, then the third, and Toriel gave up on asking their names, gave up on trying to picture the world above as time went by up there and didn't down here. And then there was Frisk, desperate to get back to a kind world where they'd fallen through the cracks, a friendly voice in their ear whispering _what if?_ and a deeper one at the back of their heart telling them _you are the future of humans and monsters_ and _stay determined_.

The Barrier broke, and the future of humans and monsters was just as new to Frisk’s eyes as it was to everyone else's. But they had left their old world behind at their first step onto the mountain, and, as they took their last step off it, they were determined to explore every inch of this new era, and to find or make a place in it for everyone.

(There have been tales of humans falling into faerie kingdoms and stumbling out long after everyone they'd known had passed. But what those tales don't say is that the faeries’ kingdom is just as much a prison for its monsters as the humans who made their way there.)


End file.
